A painter, stained glass artist and printmaker, Heinrich Campendonk was invited by Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky to become a member of the Munich artist’s group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in 1911. Later that year he exhibited his work in the first exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter, and his paintings were illustrated in the Blaue Reiter almanac. Campendonk was an admirer of primitive art and folklore, and animals figure often in his work. His paintings of animals in nature, often mystical in tone, were influenced by the work of Marc, although unlike him Campendonk often included figures in his compositions. After the First World War and the deaths of Marc and August Macke, Campendonk’s style changed. He destroyed much of his earlier work, and began to work in a manner indebted to the dreamlike imagery of Marc Chagall, whom he had met in 1914. Appointed a professor at the Akademie in Düsseldorf in 1926, Campendonk was one of any modernist painters labeled ‘degenerate artists’ by the Nazi regime and was forced to resign his teaching post in 1933. He chose to leave Germany that year and settled in 1935 in Amsterdam, becoming a naturalized Dutch citizen. His work as a stained glass artist continued to earn his considerable acclaim - winning a Grand Prix at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1937 - and it was not until after the Second World War that he resumed painting.
This large and vibrant watercolour by Campendonk may be dated to 1933, the year that the artist left Germany for good.